What's Inside

About eBook

eBook Description

In the 1920s, a complex set of relationships linked the construction of a unified Canadian identity to the imperial centre (England), to the depiction of the landscape as an imagined national geography in the works of the Group of Seven, and to the image of the Indian as a disappearing race. In National Visions, National Blindness, Leslie Dawn unravels these connections by revisiting and radically revising several well-known events and rescuing others from obscurity. Using new archival evidence, he reverses many of the conventional perceptions of the Group as a national school, and shows how, in a series of international exhibitions held in London and Paris, conflicts arose between their unpeopled landscapes and the presence of Northwest Coast Native people and arts. The book also reveals how the portraits of Native people of western Canada by the American artist Langdon Kihn served to undermine the principle of Native disappearance on which the Group's works were based. the Gitxsan people of the Upper Skeena River to the landmark 1927 exhibition which brought these elements all together and staged the discovery of Emily Carr, Dawn shows how these programs ultimately failed, but at the same time opened the door to other directions. Based on current theories, but written in an accessible and engaging style, this book will appeal to readers and researchers interested in Canadian art history, First Nations art and history, tourism, cultural politics, museum studies, and ethnographic practice.